Boxing Workouts

Training on the focus mitts is one the best ways to develop your fighting reflexes, punching technique, defense technique, and fighting strategy. Hitting the focus mitts is not only a great workout but also intellectually stimulating, and FUN! Mittwork is also the most realistic fight training simulation next to sparring.

The focus mitts are an incredibly versatile tool for boxing training and yet many boxers are only doing one thing on the mitts—which is hitting as hard and fast as possible. Focus mitt training is not only about speed and power. There’s also rhythm, timing, accuracy, strategy, style, etc, etc. There are so many different ways you could be developing yourself on the mitts. And by only thinking about power on the mitts, you cheat yourself out of developing the more refined slick “sweet boxing” skills.

I met Frank Dunlap 6 months ago when he first wrote to me after reading through my website, ExpertBoxing. He was a fan of the website and a former boxer himself, a multiple-time Golden Glove regional and state boxing champion in the welterweight division back in the 50’s.

He was also a very successful boxing coach, leading his amateur boxing team to winning every regional boxing tournament for 3 years during the 70’s, amassing an impressive win percentage of 70.6% in nearly 1,000 fights!

I figured this was a man with a wealth of information (in everything, not only boxing) and boy was I right. I spoke with him on the phone for several hours and learned all about his inspiring life. He had served in the military during the Korean War. He was a schoolteacher, a principal, a Frito-Lay delivery man, a business-owner and a school bus driver, and also a Golden Glove boxing coach. And at one time, became the local medicine man for a small village in Alaska.

He shared his boxing stories about competing in the Golden Gloves and also having trained great fighters. He once trained the Norris brothers when they were about 10 years old— (Terry Norris and Orlin Norris, boxing champions in the 90’s). He talked about meeting his childhood idol, the legendary Rocky Marciano. There were bits and pieces of practical old school boxing knowledge in every memory and of course…an amazing life story.

Core strength is easily the most important factor in power generation and functional movement. No matter what you do, whether it’s throwing a punch or taking a punch, standing still or moving around, you will need tremendous amounts of core strength to do it.

Your core can allow you to move (twist/footwork), or prevent you from moving (balance). Your core is responsible for holding your body steady and combining the strength of other muscles in your body. Your core muscles can rotate your body for rotational power and has more to do with your punching power than any other muscle.

And since you’re going to be doing thousands if not millions of sit-ups throughout your fighting career, you might as well learn how to do a sit-up correctly. [Click to read more…]

Whether you’re training for a fight, for weight loss, or any kind of physical activity, push-ups will be a one of your regular workouts. It’s a great exercise to build strength and power for the upper body and doesn’t require any special equipment other than the ground and gravity.

For fighters, push-ups are especially beneficial for developing the chest, shoulders, core, and triceps. You can even develop a bodybuilder’s physique with push-ups if you do enough of them.

I have a task for you: just go ahead and search the Internet for the term ‘kettlebells’. Then check out some of the resulting pages and I dare you not to think that these ‘cannonballs with a handle’ (a new banality is born every minute…) are some god’s gift to humanity.

I bet you are going to read stuff promising you serious muscle building, core strengthening, fat ‘torching’ and tremendous conditioning. There are also going to be some references to old school Russian strongmen eating iron nails instead of spinach, the infamous Spetsnaz, and – who knows? – maybe even Rasputin and Stalin too!

Well, let me tell you a little secret: not everything about kettlebells is exactly as advertised! And who better than a kettlebells coach to make this clear? [Click to read more…]

9 years ago, I stepped into the ring for my first sparring match. It was a moment of excitement and pure adrenaline. A Rocky fantasy dream-come-true moment that took all the life out of me.

I was dead tired long before the final bell. I couldn’t walk straight because my feet were stuck in the mud and my legs felt like noodles. The 14oz gloves clung to my arms like a prisoner’s ball-and-chain. Spectators laughed when I couldn’t lift my leg to climb out of the ropes. My shirt dripped like I had gone swimming. I almost vomited when I bent over at the water fountain.

You wouldn’t know it from the way I looked…but I won.

I might have been a winner but I sure didn’t feel that one. And that’s the miracle of fatigue. Fatigue is a crippling handicap ruining your physical performance right when you need it most.

Fast reflexes are the standard of being a fighter. If anything, boxing is little more than a battle of reflexes. One man’s reflexes versus another’s.

Sure there’s skill, there’s strategy, strength, and all those other qualities. But without the reflexes to utilize those abilities, you won’t survive the round, let alone win the match.

Now there’s a difference between just being fast and having TRAINED fighting reflexes. It’s the difference between jerking your head back instinctively versus slipping and countering with a knockout punch.

It’s a long road to developing knockout counters as second nature. But I’ll show you how to get there. [Click to read more…]

Well now it’s time for something a little more exciting. Hopefully with this list of easy jump rope tricks, you’ll be tempted to finally start jumping rope. The jump rope is truly that amazing and will work wonders for your boxing coordination, rhythm, and fluidity!

Fancy boxing shuffles, cross-overs, double-jumps, all that stuff you’ve seen the pro boxers do with the jump rope…you can do it too. And I’ll show you how.